How the Games Industry Works... and Why TM

About Don Daglow

Don Daglow is a three-time Inc. 500 CEO and 2008 Technical Emmy® Award recipient who advises game developers and publishers around the world. His clients range from small mobile game startups to large international publishers.

Don is the only games industry executive who has led development teams on every generation of the first three decades of video game consoles, and he has worked on projects on every platform generation from the Intellivision in 1980 to the PS4 today.

Don speaks extensively in North America, Europe and Asia at conferences focused on games, interactivity and entertainment.

He also serves as President of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Foundation, the charitable arm of the AIAS.

Don's career in game design began in 1971 (before Pong), and he has been designing online titles since 1987 (before the Internet). In addition to an Emmy® Award for Technology and Engineering in 2008 for his creation of Neverwinter Nights, the first graphical MMORPG, he also received the CGE Award in 2003 for "groundbreaking achievements that shaped the Video Game Industry," and his game Utopia is featured in the touring Smithsonian Museum "Art of Video Games" exhibit.

Don's fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and he is a past winner of a National Endowment for the Humanities playwriting competition.

He speaks extensively at international conferences on the intersection of games, technology, entertainment and culture, and has delivered keynote addresses in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the United States.

Other appearances include the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) in London, and the Smithsonian Museum of Art, where his work is also featured in the Museum's 2012 Art of Games exhibit.

Don's career in game design began in 1971 (before Pong), and he has been designing online titles since 1987 (before the Internet). He coined the widely-used term "Console Wars" as well as other industry standards. Scroll down for more on his four decades of work in the games industry.

HONORS

Emmy® Award for Technology and Engineering, 2008 -- Don's work was selected for an Emmy® honoring his creation of Neverwinter Nights. The first graphical Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) in an era of text-based RPG's, Neverwinter blazed a trail for later MMO's including Ultima Online, Everquest and World of Warcraft.

Don is one of only three game designers or producers (with id Software's John Carmack and Blizzard's Mike Morhaime) to be selected for a Technical Emmy® and to accept an Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Achievement Award.

Smithsonian "Art of Video Games" Exhibit, 2012 -- Don's work on Utopia was featured in this exhibition at the Smithsonian Museum of Art in Washington D.C., and he was a featured speaker at the Smithsonian's Gamefest event. The exhibit is currently on an extensive tour of North America.

Video Game Hall of Fame -- Don's original game designs have earned Video Game Hall of Fame honors three times, and have won multiple Game of the Year and Sports Game of the Year awards.

Inc. 500 -- As CEO of Stormfront Studios, Don earned a position on the prestigious "Inc. 500" list of top-performing companies three times. In each case the company placed in the top 300 positions on the list.

Don Daglow is the only executive in the history of the games industry to lead development teams on every generation of the first three decades of video game consoles, and he has worked on projects on every platform generation from the Intellivision in 1980 to the PS4 today. Electronic Games has called him "one of the best-known and respected producers in the history of the field,"

Prior to founding Daglow Entertainment, Don served as president and CEO of Stormfront Studios for twenty years, selling over 14,000,000 games and generating over $500,000,000 in retail and online game sales. Stormfront's best known titles include the Tony La Russa Baseball series; the first PC versions of the console hit Madden NFL Football; the original Neverwinter Nights online MMO for AOL; the creation (with Producer Scott Orr) of the NASCAR Racing franchise for EA Sports; and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, based on the film by Peter Jackson.

Earlier in his career Don served as Director of Intellivision Game Development for Mattel, as a Producer at a small start-up called Electronic Arts and as head of the Entertainment and Education division at Broderbund. At EA he produced two of the first three EA sports titles. At Broderbund he led the acquisition of rights for the original Sim City, and exec produced the original Prince of Persia, Star Wars and the Carmen Sandiego series.

Don designed and programmed the first-ever interactive computer baseball game and first interactive sports simulation in 1971 (now recorded in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown), the first mainframe computer role-playing game ("Dungeon" for PDP-10 mainframes, 1975), the first commercial sim game (Intellivision Utopia, 1981) and the first game to use multiple camera angles (Intellivision World Series Major League Baseball, 1983). He co-designed Computer Game Hall of Fame title Earl Weaver Baseball (1987, with Eddie Dombrower) as well as the original Neverwinter Nights for AOL (1991-97).

Don serves as the President of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Foundation, the charitable organization organized by the AIAS. He twice was elected to the Board of Directors of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, serving from 2003 through 2011 before assuming the role of AIAS Foundation president. He serves on the selection committee for the AIAS Randy Pausch Scholarship Fund, on the Advisory Board for GDC Europe, and as Collections Advisor for the International Center for the History of Electronic Games.

Don also is a past winner of the National Endowment for the Humanities "New Voices" playwriting competition, and has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Don holds a BA in English (Playwriting) from Pomona College and an Ed.M. from Claremont Graduate University.